72 British Deer and their Horns 
one day with an impetuous youth who, on missing an easy shot at a stag, proceeded to 
bombard it at several hundred yards’ distance as it ran unscathed up a hill towards the 
march. Donald had, of course, previously spied his neighbour’s ground, and it was gall and 
bitterness to him to know that the party from the adjoining forest was even at that very 
moment watching them. “ I wudna shute ony mair if a was ye, he said, placing his hand 
quietly on the smoking rifle, “ye might kull him abin the mairch.” 
Away now to Black Mount, of which I have said some little in previous pages. Here 
is a deer forest worth talking about—the largest, I believe, in the North—covering as it does 
some 90,000 acres of the fair county of Argyle ; and surely nowhere else in all Scotland is 
grander, wilder, or more exquisite scenery to be found. Loch Maree and the rough forests 
away to the north-west of it are superb, as are also parts of Ardverikie, Loch More, and 
western Argyleshire, but to my mind they are, one and all, surpassed in grandeur by the 
magnificent high passes and corries of Black Mount. 
On a fine day in October, standing on the rough summit of Altahourn or Ben Starab, 
one seems lost in a surrounding sea of mountains, which stretch without a break in serried 
masses away to the west coast. Deer fences are but little used here, and the children of 
the forest wander over this vast domain with almost all their pristine freedom. The owner, 
the present Marquis of Breadalbane, is himself a keen stalker ; it is the one sport that he 
really loves, and, “ like master, like man,” his foresters are as fine and hard-working a lot as 
any to be found in the North. Every man on the place knows his work, and does it, the 
game is plentiful, and the whole entourage a scene of wildest beauty. He must, indeed, be 
but a poor sort of sportsman who fails to find enjoyment here. I can speak from experience, 
and it is no mere compliment to say that to his kindness and that of Lady Breadalbane I 
owe some of the happiest days of my life. Sir Edwin Landseer was constantly there in the 
late Lord Breadalbane’s time, as well as during the tenancy of Lord Dudley, who followed ; 
and one sees from the number of pictures he painted from sketches taken in the forest how 
much he thought of its scenery and its sport. “ The Stag at Bay ” records a true incident of 
that forest. A fine deer was slightly wounded on Ben Toig and two hounds were slipped 
after him. One of them the hart struck dead as it galloped beside him, so another hound 
was let go, and this second couple took the stag down into Loch Tulla, where they held him 
at bay close to the Forest Lodge. The older of the two hounds, however, attempted to seize 
the stag by the ear in the water, on which he also received his coup de grace. Sir Edwin, 
who was in the house at the time, ran out and was a witness of the final tragedy. “The Deer 
Drive ” was another picture sketched in there, the scene being taken from the high pass 
between Altahourn and Larig Dochart, a spot where the present Lord Tweedmouth and the 
late Lord Dudley killed no fewer than nineteen big stags at one drive. Black Mount also 
furnished the subject of “The Torrent” and many more of Sir Edwin’s famous forest pictures. 
When I was there, old John M‘Leish, than whom there is no finer stalker in Scotland, 1 
was the only man on the place who could remember Landseer well, and he was not very 
1 During the season 1892 this remarkable stalker’s average was exceptional. Out of twenty-three stalks made on his beat 
only one went wrong, owing to the deer having moved. Of the other twenty-two the various rifles all obtained their shots and 
twenty-two stags were killed. Though this would be good shooting for any single sportsman, it is remarkable that, -with six or 
seven different men shooting, every stag should have been grassed. As every sportsman will know, his success lies in the way the 
stalker brings his man up to the firing point, and without undue haste gives him a fair chance. 
